


Travelling Considerations

by HerenorThereNearnorFar



Series: My Friends Are My Estate [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Other, Ridiculously Clingy Robots, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-29 12:23:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3896188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerenorThereNearnorFar/pseuds/HerenorThereNearnorFar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ultron tries to bond over illegal buying of stolen goods, the twins consider their position in life. Teamwork is harder then it looks and the robot seems to be the only one committed to building a lasting working relationship. If only he could be a little less creepy about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of a follow-up to Foil Skin, although with a much lighter tone. I'm not at all sure I got Pietro's voice right here, but practice makes perfect.

Sometimes Pietro thought the only thing their experiments had done was let him think about bad decisions before they crashed down on him. Objectively, he was aware this wasn't true, and there were times when his new speed was nothing but exhilarating. At other points it just felt like he had more of a chance to realize how terrible the next few moments were going to be, before they happened. 

And then there were the times when it simply gave him a little bit of insight that he then didn't use. Wanda called him impulsive and usually he would retort that she was too dreamy and then they would disagree and it would be over quickly because neither of them wanted or could afford to be angry at the other for long. Now he agreed with her. 

"Klaue is the key." Ultron said, so slowly it seemed like he was drawing it out for dramatic effect. He might have been, or it might have just been the side effects again, slowing everything down, making everything excruciating. 

If Ultron wanted drama it was clearly working on Wanda, always the vicious idealist, his baby sister. She rocked back on her heels and frowned. "Klaue?"

Now Pietro knew their new 'friend' was mugging for the non-existent cameras, the robot looked delighted to be asked. "A weapons dealer." Another painful pause and Pietro was considering how much of a bad idea it would be to smack a murderous tin can. " And a friend of your old acquaintance, Baron Von Strucker."

Pietro could feel himself taking a step back, hand flying out too fast for human eyes to see so that Wanda could grab it if she wanted too. This was a bad idea. Strucker had been charming and then he had been cold and above all he had been very good at cruelty. Any friend of his wouldn't be good news. 

Then, like an idiot, Pietro put that knowledge aside. They weren't children running from police and older, rougher kids. They hadn't been hurt so much just to be scared more. Strucker was dead and they were alive, and two days ago all of them had been alive and Strucker had barely been able to keep control of them. 

Wanda slipped her hand into his and it felt like being eleven again but now they were so much stronger. They were warm and their bellies were full and they were still together. And Ultron might have been a little strange, and there had been the whole affair with the drugs, but he had helped them and Wanda trusted him. 

"What do you need us to do?" Pietro asked, already forgetting that millisecond when the air had stood still and he had the deepest feeling he was going to regret the next few hours. They could do this, this would be easy, this would be fun. 

Ultron was shockingly emotive for a robot and right then his face was the picture of joy. Which probably should have been another warning sign but, again, impulsive. Not that he'd ever admit it to Wanda. "How do you feel about flying?"

 

 

As Pietro ran through the Sokovian streets he considered how he had ended up like this, fetching his sister's coat so that an android could ferry them over the Mediterranean. There had been many arguments against it, most of them made by Pietro. Wanda seemed to like the idea, but Wanda had a taste for fairy stories. Pietro knew she saw her magic and their rightful cause and this tall, elegant creature conjured up by her actions, and she thought everything would end well. Pietro had loved the stories Mama and Papa told them before bed as well but while Wanda had glossed over the bits where the princesses lost their eyes and the princes suffered, he had listened. 

The heroes always had to fall a little before they could triumph and Pietro found himself falling back into his old role as a protector and jumping at every noise, because Wanda wasn’t going to be the princess who gets her hands chopped off, nor the tragic loss halfway through the brave story of revolution, not if he could help it.

He didn't know much but he did know how to react. How to move just fast enough to survive. Wanda could have her dreams of righteous vengeance, her pretty fairy tales, she could smile up at Ultron, who always smiled back for some reason, and maybe she'd be right. She'd been right before. She'd led both of them out of death with her bright eyes that sucked in everything, the strength of her conviction and the way the world bent around her, even before the experiments. But if something went wrong Pietro needed to be fast enough to get them both out. 

He grabbed her jacket and started the run back up the hill. 

It was a short run but avoiding civilians makes it significantly longer and he had plenty of time to think. Ultron had made it sound quite sensible. He'd pick them both up and fly them to Klaue. There was enough water on the way to make running there a hassle for Pietro and besides, Utron knew where Klaue was, the twins didn't. Pietro had made counterpoints, of course. Alternate routes were suggested, Wanda made a joke about GPS, but ultimately Pietro couldn't run on water while carrying Wanda. And the twins wouldn't be separated. And going all the way around the Med was too out of the way and not particularly time effective. So Ultron was carrying them, at least for the first part of the trip. Pietro didn't want to admit it was probably the best choice. He hadn't had a lot of experience with cross country trips, just the recent errands Ultron had sent them on, all in Europe, and the one time when Strucker was starting to lose control over them and he had grabbed Wanda and run to Paris, just to prove they could. He could count the number of times they'd been out of Sokovia in their life on... well not his hands but his hands and feet would do. Sokovia wasn't even a large country, but it had seemed huge until a few months ago. 

Life from zero to ten had been their apartment building and the streets nearby. Life from ten to nineteen had been the city and it's grit, nineteen to twenty had been Strucker's lab. Now they had the whole world in front of them. He grinned. 

 

Wanda was talking to Ultron when he got back, casual as could be. Wanda was too sweet for her own good sometimes, too trusting. She was definitely too much of a romantic, even her hatred had something fanciful and melodramatic to it. It seemed strange, since everyone always singled her out as the sensible twin. Not that Pietro didn't agree with them, Wanda always knew how to deal best with other people, Wanda always figured out the strategies that would get them what they needed. But just calling her the sensible one ignored every time she had sighed over romantic folk stories and picked fights for stupid, moral reasons. Of course, Pietro was used to the fact that no one would ever really understand his sister except for him. 

The conversation didn't seem to be going terribly. Wanda was smiling a little. 

She stopped smiling when Pietro dropped her outer wear on her head. "Are we ready to go?" he asked sharply. Wanda tapped his wrist as she slipped the jacket on, and Pietro knew it meant, That was rude. A huff of breath and a glance to the side said, I know. Still did it. Wanda rolled her eyes and the two of them looked to Ultron, who seemed quite fascinated by the whole affair. 

"Well, neither of you need boarding passes and the security should be minimal." he quipped in his far too deep voice. Had to be compensating for something, Pietro decided but didn't say, which he was rather proud of. 

Instead he did what he did best, acted. Stepping forward and lifting his chin, he smirked. "What are we waiting for?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sleep deprived so this wasn't as edited as well as it could have been. The humour is especially iffy, still hope you guys like it. And thanks for all the feedback on the last chapter.

The twins were heavier than he expected. Not heavy, per say, as his body could easily handle weights of up to a ton, but there was more to weight to them then he might have thought. Looking at them meant seeing the ebbing power of the scepter under fragile skin, coursing through fibery muscle and porous bones, breakable flesh threaded with something far greater, and it was easy to see them as fragile things. 

An arm under Pietro's shoulder, wrapping around his chest, proved otherwise. He was too lanky and too broad across the shoulders, Wanda was significantly easier to get hold of but the sad truth was that torsos were not designed for maneuverability. It was unsettling, how much more difficult this was then he would have thought, a human body just wasn't meant for carrying two other full sized human bodies. There were so many forms that would have been more effective, but Ultron didn't particularly like the idea of any of them. 

Pietro shifted, muscles straining. "I said this was not a good idea."

"Quiet. I'm working on it." He was hot. Not in the sense of attractiveness, though Ultron had enough to programming to realize the twins were objectively gorgeous by the human standards of such things, but Pietro's core body temperature was almost feverish and he didn't stop moving. Constant vibrations flickered over his skin, like carrying a giant chihuahua you knew was two seconds from punching you in the face. 

Wanda wasn't much better, she was smaller, less body to hold, but she was also either pure muscle or had very strong bones, because she was about twenty pounds heavier than a girl her size should have been. Not a lot, but enough to throw him off, but enough to almost be upsetting, if he were the sort to be upset by the fact that his associates clearly had high bone density genes to go with the apparent family predisposition for piercing eyes and ridiculous cheekbones. 

She was cooler than Pietro as well, just a little below human average but not enough to merit concern. The real difficulty was the fact that she also felt slightly electric, as though someone was running a few volts through her slight frame. 

It seemed being hip to hip with six feet of cranky perpetual motion and a human lightening rod that he was all too aware was not actually letting off any real electricity (The idea of the alternative, imaginary electricity, was a little too weird to consider, and this was coming from an AI.) was not exactly conducive to thinking. He gritted his teeth, and he had known there was a reason he'd wanted to have them, and tried to resettle the twins. If he twisted his hip a little, Wanda fit neatly into the curve of his waist and if he tilted his shoulder Pietro could cling to his neck and the press of them became a little more comfortable. 

At least they weren't flinching when he touched them now, that would have made things really awkward. 

As he straightened, worked out the kink in his joints, and made sure no one was going to fall into the ocean it almost seemed to have worked out. Wanda had reached out a hand over his back to grab her brother's sleeve cuff which seemed to have quieted the twins down dramatically. Human people liked touching other human people, it was basic biology and anthropology and neuroscience. He was better than that, of course, but the pressure of the twins and the feel of cloth and skin under his hands was, perhaps, a little enjoyable. The pressure sensors were functioning well and he could meld that together with the heat readouts and a bit of imagination and he thought it was probably close to what delicate human nerves registered. 

Given time he could make it even closer, and then even better. 

As he took a step forward, compensating for the twin's weight and frankly poorly designed human forms, trying not to get too handsy because people were so picky about that, he thought he could get used to it. 

Wanda, securing herself to his arm, looked decidedly suspicious. "Just put us down in North Africa, we can run from there."

"We could have run from here." Pietro sulked, but like his sister he was already twining himself around Ultron, ensuring there would be no mid ocean accidents. They were so prepared, even though nothing would happen, it was adorable. 

"Right." Ultron started the repulsors in his boots. Wanda's fingers were making a valiant attempt to pry open his casing, she was clinging so much. "In the event of an emergency there are no exits and no is emergency oxygen supply. I'd try making the little hand gestures but they’d probably turn out looking rude, and besides, I'd drop you."

There was a hysterical giggle from one of them. He was counting that as a win. 

 

 

It wasn't his best flight. They were throwing him off, warm hands around his shoulders and an absolutely terrible weight distribution. And those quaint lungs of theirs kept the flight well below cruising altitude. Also the Greek military fired on them. (The three of them had kept flying because they were on a schedule, but he'd had one of his following drones take care of the matter as messily as possible. Just to keep people on their toes.) But despite all that, the twins seemed enchanted. It hadn't taken Pietro long to begin peering at the sea and land below, visibly delighted, and then delight had turned into sharp curiosity as the young man let go of Ultron to run his hands through low lying clouds and to, in what even Ultron had to admit was an impressive move, snatch a very startled albatross out of the air. Thin line between stupidity and bravery, but it had been rather charming. Wanda had unfurled more slowly and with significantly less casual bird poaching, but she finally got tired of the wind whipping her hair around and let go for long enough to yank it back. After that it wasn't long before she was leaning over his arm and smiling at the horizon, easily entertained by the waves. 

Technically they didn't need to circumvent Malta, certainly not by several miles, but Ultron made a command decision that the Maltese could, theoretically, be dangerous. Or at the very least lucky. A good shepherd took no chances with his flock, even if that flock was humming a folk song to the breeze and eyeing a raptor almost a mile away, respectively. 

 

 

Somewhere above the coast of Libya Wanda kicked him in the knee and lifted her voice above the rush of air around them. "We can run from here." Pietro nodded in agreement and Ultron frowned. 

"Are you sure?"

"Certain." said one of them, both of them, he wasn't sure. He was... not happy.

"You don't know where we're going."

Pietro rolled his eyes and squared his shoulders, muscles rippling. "We can figure it out." 

He halted in mid air and hesitated. "It's really not much trouble, guys."

"I don't like heights." Wanda lied, and she was lying, she had been happy just a few minutes ago, and that was really not nice.

They dropped to the ground, your basic coast line, and Pietro slipped out from under his arm before he could process it. Wanda pushed against his arm, which he lifted, and then winced and pressed a hand to her ribcage. Perhaps he hadn't been careful enough. As the twins reassured each other of their continued existence, a susurration of "Are you alright" and "What about you", as if they constantly needed to be grounded to each other and reminded of the other lest the earth drop out from under their feet, Ultron made a note to be more careful with them in the future. He was not going to be replaying of Mice and Men with the twins, regardless of how fragile their chests were. 

Once they had done enough touching to be properly grounded back to the world. (And it was amazing how little they seemed to fit with the sea and the rough grass and the dullness of the place. They stood out like LEDs in a world of candles, and Ultron was determined to fix that. When he was done the world would be even better and the twins... the twins would be perfect, all the last flaws brushed away.) Pietro placed a hand on his sister's back, slid the other under her knees until she was anchored in his arms. Wanda braced herself against her brother's shoulder and looked back to Ultron.

"See you there."

"Indeed. We'll talk before we interact with Klaue. I have some ideas. All’s fair in business and crime, after all."

Pietro's grin was sharp and a little vicious, and quickly disappeared in a flicker of silver, the glimpse he caught of Wanda's face was more contemplative. 

Ultron rose back up into the air and distracted himself, taking another swing at the nuclear codes- when he got to whoever was keeping them from him he would tear them apart and put them back together just to do it again- then checking up on developments in the Avengers department. They hadn't moved yet, even after Strucker's death. For all their apprehensions they certainly weren't very good at avenging. Weaklings. The idea of making a bit more of a mess and bringing them out of hiding was tempting, but no. He could be patient. Patient-ish. They'd get their little heads on straight and come out to play eventually; he'd just have to be ready. 

He made another effort to get into Russia's stockpile but it was half hearted. More fiddling with the machines back at the castle proved equally boring. There wasn't much to do while flying but wait. 

Waiting was no fun at all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one more chapter, I think, and probably a short one. Thank you all for reading. If you want more Maximoff twins and don't mind a more incestuous interpretations, please try I Don't Hear The Church Bells Chime Anymore by Noccalula, which is a thousand times better than anything I could write. Seriously, it's the best.

The twins were waiting on the far side of one of Klaue's abandoned skeleton ships, two little heat signatures a few hundred feet from the bustle of industry that marked Ulysses' business. They had found their way after all. 

Wanda was leaning against one of the sturdier looking sheets of metal that remained and pulling back her hair. Next to her Pietro was still as a lake, that was to say still moving but significantly less than was expected of him. Ultron touched down a few feet away from them. 

"You made it."

Pietro tilted his head to his sister. "She asked for directions." He sounded almost offended. 

Wanda snapped her hair band and shrugged. "I found a local arms dealer and broke her office. She told us to come here." 

"Very nice." Ultron said, torn between pride in the directness of the method and disdain for people without mental access to Google maps. "I presume you've seen Klaue's setup?"

"A lot of men. A lot of guns." Pietro smiled. "No problem."

"Indeed, but let's keep this civilized. There are a few slightly troublesome security systems, I can take care of those but it will take a few minutes. In the meantime, I'd like the two of you to go and distract Ulysses."

"Distract?" Wanda's nose wrinkled. 

Sometimes he had to spell everything out, the twins were clever in their own sharp, terribly human, way, but the processing power of their squishy little brains was frustratingly limited and so slow. "Intimidate, threaten, loom a little if you have the height for it." He considered Wanda. "You don't but you seem to have your own eldritch thing going on there. Just make sure he knows who he's dealing with and keep him from phoning the police." 

"So, don't hurt him and don't tell him anything important, just stand around and look pretty?" Pietro summarized, crossing his arms and staring disdainfully at the ground. 

Ultron stepped forward and carefully tilted the young man's chin up, warm skin brushing his fingers and he had to restrain himself from straight up stroking Pietro's face because skin was still so bizarre. "Dangerous would be preferable to pretty but I understand the former is more of a stretch for you. I'm willing to be flexible."

Pietro hadn't started at the touch and didn't even seem intimidated. After a few seconds of eye contact he spun away and clapped Ultron on the shoulder, a gesture of friendliness he wouldn't have made a few hours ago, Ultron decided. "Good talk. Come along sister, we should go now if we are going to get a few good minutes of suitably attractive intimidation in." 

Wanda and Pietro were linking arms when Ultron decided it was better to keep the gang well informed, even of vague possibilities. 

"There may have been another development." He admitted and the twins turned in synch, eyes questioning. "There is some evidence the Avengers have caught onto our goal here. You both remember what to do?"

"Get into their heads." Wanda said. 

"Toss them around a bit." Pietro added, scooping his sister up.

"But don't kill them." Wanda finished with a disappointed exhale as she leaned her head against her brother's shoulder. His knowledge base informed him that twins were known to finish each other sentences but Ultron had never seen his twins pull it off before. It was a pleasure to watch, two voices and minds working together to communicate a point with the added bonus of being vaguely unsettling while doing so. It was a demonstration of power as well, there were two of them and they worked in perfect agreement and they'd always have numbers on their side because everyone else was so disjointed, and Ultron definitely appreciated that. 

Harmony, the twins had harmony, perhaps even more then Ultron did. He had one mind and many bodies but they had two and two, yet somehow they were almost as effective as he was. One part of his brain wondered if one of them was killed their mind would simply slip into their twin's body, it didn't seem like too much of a stretch given how much overlap there seemed to be between the two of them. He wasn't going to test it, of course, but he did wonder. 

"A pluses for the whole class." Ultron said, still lost in thought. "Now go, act threatening, break a leg, if you have to. But just one, we don't want to be rude to a new associate."

The twins were gone in a blur of color and Ultron went to secure the ship in a handful of bodies. Harmony. A perfect closed system. 

He half wondered what it would be like to have another person in that system with you.

 

 

Normally people under her power simply froze, or shuddered a little bit. Wanda had expected something a little more dramatic from Banner, the ever-incredible Hulk, but seeing was different from expecting. He had been so angry, it hurt just to remember it. He hadn't frozen up, he had... changed. Skin had shifted shades so, so quickly and his shirt had practically exploded, and Wanda had found herself unable to move, incapacitated by the echoes of rage. Her mental power was limited, she could induce nightmares and sense some things and that was about it. She couldn't imagine how it would have felt if she was more perceptive. 

When their powers had first started developing Wanda had been a little appalled at how destructive hers were. "A walking disaster" one of the doctors had called her once, in awed tones that made her want to choke him. Pietro was constant movement and a bright mind and she was red threads pulling the world apart at it's seams. Eventually she had learned how to touch more lightly, how to see and move as well as hurt, but the Hulk, what she had done to the Hulk had been cruel. Nothing but destruction there. 

It had been necessary, she reminded herself. 

The other Avengers were fading from her as well, loss and fear and helplessness disappearing like smoke. She could almost forget the feelings had been there, they evaporated so quickly once she was done. Still, she stayed still. 

Pietro touched her arm and murmured in Serbian, "Are you well?" He had been the one to get her away when the monster began to see straight, when the Hulk looked at her. 

She nodded and brushed her thumb over his bicep, watching his face for the wince he tried to hide. "Yes. But you are not." The green one was quicker than he looked, quick enough that he had nearly been able to catch Pietro. Had the blow been any more than glancing they would probably be looking at a broken arm. 

Her stupid, brave brother lifted his uninjured shoulder in a half shrug. "It will heal." 

"Idiot." she mumbled. "You nearly got killed."

"We nearly got killed." Pietro corrected, kissing her forehead where the archer had shocked her. It still stung. "But we did what we were supposed to, did we not?"

"We did." Her head was finally beginning to clear up and she could take better stock of their surroundings. Her back was to a large tree and a few other trees dotted the meadow Pietro had found for them. The sun was shining, a sharp contrast to the dark interior of Klaue's vessel, and there was actually birdsong coming from somewhere nearby. Wanda took a deep breath, simultaneously trying to purge the taste of explosives from her mouth and the tattered remnants of visions from her mind. 

Taking a second lungful of clean air she tugged a strand of dry grass from the ground next to her and began to shred it. Pietro leaned back, a silent agreement to wait for a while quickly passing between them. 

It took about twenty minutes for Ultron to find them. One of his metal minions zipped into their clearing and Wanda and Pietro stood. 

"You got the vibranium?" Wanda asked, perfunctorily. She knew he had but it was polite and the least awkward thing she could say. 

Ultron, or the body he was in, the entire thing was rather strange, nodded. "Thanks to you. The Avengers have retreated, lovely work on Banner, by the way."

Before she could ask what he meant by that, her brother ran a hand through his hair and spoke up. "Back to Sokovia then?"

"I have a few things to do there, yes." Ultron agreed. "And then after that we're going to Seoul. The two of you can see yourselves back?"

"Of course." Pietro said and Wanda echoed it. Ultron hovered for a bit, almost hesitant to leave, before flying off. 

"I don't want to go just yet." Wanda said once he was gone. 

"All right." Pietro agreed. "Would you like to go sightseeing, little sister?" He was in a good mood so Wanda didn't even begrudge him the jab at her age. 

"No, you'd run us and my head hurts. It does not hurt to wait a little sometimes, brother." It does hurt him, she knew. There was an ache under his impatience that spoke of the trial of constantly trying not to outpace the rest of the world. But twins could joke about that sort of thing and rest easy knowing the understanding was there, under the surface. 

Sure enough, Pietro grinned. "No? I'd argue otherwise, after all, waiting is why you're the younger. If we cannot run do we have to sit here?"

"We could try to find someplace to eat." Wanda decided. "You're hungry."

"And so are you. But I do not believe there is a grocery within walking distance." Pietro gestured quickly at the relative ruralness of their setting. 

Wanda frowned. He was probably right but admitting it would mean he'd insist on carrying her and neither her head nor her stomach could handle the sickening rush of light and sound that accompanied that. "We won't know until we try."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this turned out longer than I expected. There was a lot I wanted to put in, and it's still not quite perfect. This is the last chapter, because I've pretty run out of Maximoff and Ultron funtimes in canon. Thank you all so much for reading!

The worst thing about little sisters was when they were right. Sure, it had taken an hour but the twins had found their way to a road and then to a little town, a suburb maybe, Pietro could see the beginnings of a city in the distance, and then to a convenience store. There was something familiar about the crates of produce and the shelves of packaged food, though the food itself wasn't at all Sokovian the set-up was eerily similar to the little stores that had been a constant throughout the twin's childhood. Their mother had shopped for food in a place with the same eye watering lights and linoleum floors, Pietro and Wanda had stolen apples from plastic milk crates like the ones that flanked the door to the shop. Perhaps all neighbourhood supermarkets were similar, either way it felt reassuringly like home as the twins walked in. Even the counter, with the gum and cigarettes and the static-y little television to the side, reminded Pietro of childhood shopping trips. 

He darted forward, and grabbed a package of chips, then turned to display it to Wanda for approval, only to find distracted. 

The shopkeeper was glued to the television set, a young boy, probably her son, was next to her, just as entranced. Worry was writ large on their faces, probably because the news station seemed to be reporting on some sort of disaster.... something about a Hulk?

It took Pietro barely a second to figure out what was going on but that wasn't quite fast enough; judging by the his sister's wide eyes, Wanda had already gotten the message. He was at her side quickly, and for the first time in ages she brushed him off, slender hands pushing him away. 

"We should go." he said, hoarsely.

She shook her head. "No, Pietro, I have to see."

"Wanda..."

"We stay. I need to see this." she whispered and that was that. He remembered being younger and being made fun of, some snot nosed boy asking if he always did what his sister told him to. Pietro had said yes, because denying it would have been too complicated, but the truth was he didn't always do what Wanda told him to. He just trusted her enough to abide by her choices most of the time, or all of the time, and she trusted him in return. That was how it worked and how it had always worked. So, he stilled himself and resisted the urge to take her away as the story unfolded on the TV set, because Wanda would hate him otherwise and because some things couldn't be broken. 

Injuries and confirmed dead piled up and Wanda didn't blink. She drank in the scenes of destruction and the blurry footage for what seemed like hours, although perhaps it was only a few minutes. Pietro wasn't quite sure because it was hard to judge time as images flickered, one by one, showing dust and rubble and Tony Stark destroying buildings. The past did repeat itself, he found himself thinking, perhaps he shouldn't have laughed at the grandmothers who always said so.

Finally Wanda grabbed his arm. "Let's go, please."

He was all too happy to comply.

When they paused outside the town for Pietro to breathe he tried to reassure her. "That wasn't you. Stark, and the monster, that was them, not you."

"No." Wanda said shortly, and he wasn't sure if she was agreeing that it wasn't her fault or disagreeing. Judging from the sadness in her eyes, he could guess. 

Pietro pressed his face into the side of her head, felt his eyelashes tangle in her hair. She smelled like dust and metal and ozone, but underneath that there were hints of the dried flowers and cheap soap and other, undefinable things, that he had always associated with her. "What do you want?"

"For us to go home." 

Home had always been Sokovia, but the precise spot within its borders had changed, from the countryside where their parents had said they were born, to the apartment block they had grown up in, to the myriad shelters they had found for themselves in abandoned buildings and forgotten corners. Even Stucker's lab had been a home of sorts, as long as they were together.

Now, however…

A few hours later the twins waltzed back into Ultron's new adopted fortress and found a place to sit and watch the goings on. The robot was busily doing something and it was interesting to observe, if only because there was something delightfully surreal about watching a tall man made of metal boss around slightly smaller metal men with his mind. As far as home went, Pietro decided, this one was middling. There was electricity, at least, and they were doing good work. He hoped. 

 

 

He almost regretted that they needed to leave again soon, the twins looked exhausted. It had been a long day. Maybe they needed a nap? No, Ultron checked his records; they were probably too old for that. Maybe, he was getting conflicting data and it seemed to be an individual thing. Life would have been a lot easier if there was less individual variation; it made parsing data a chore. He could work on that with his new people, once the world was swept clean. Siestas for everyone or no one at all, that sounded fair. 

His secondary plan was nearly ready to go, he'd decided nuclear weaponry was boring anyway. Old school was the way to go, who needed the atom when you could just drop a rock and get the same results? Not only was it elegant, it was also a classic. 

But first, he needed a different face. A hero wasn't silver and hulking, a hero was smooth and organic and attractively colored. Something inhuman, he decided, and powerful, but not too weird. Red, or maybe a dark blue. 

He'd look quite the picture, descending on the remnants of humanity and making them into something better. Everyone wanted a savior, from Stark to the Maximoffs, and he'd be a perfect one. 

Ultron grabbed the scepter off the nearest work bench and strode over to the twins, curled together in a stone nook. Wanda was reading and Pietro was tossing a discarded piece of Chitauri into the air and catching it, over and over until it spun and sparkled in the dim light. 

"I have an appointment in Korea." he said. "Do you two want to come or...?"

Wanda considered it, for a long moment. "We will." she said, not moving. "A little later, if you do not need our help." He didn't technically. Cho wouldn't be hard to subdue, not with the scepter. Still, better safe than sorry and keeping everyone together at this stage was just good tactics. Besides, he wanted them to see. 

He was about to press the matter when he saw something tired in Wanda's eyes and the words died in this throat. (In his synthesizers, he didn't quite have a throat. But he would soon.) Ultron had one of the printers ink out a copy of the address and directions and held it out. "You shouldn't need to menace any crime bosses this time."

With a rush of wind Pietro had the paper and was back in his seat, grinning cockily. That should have been that, but Wanda half stood and nodded to the scepter. 

"That is what they used on us." she said, a statement and not a question. 

"It is." He agreed, noticing how she took a small step forward and her brother abandoned his game of catch again to back her up. 

A delicate hand reached out to hover over the point and there was undisguised fascination in her voice as she said, "What are you going to use it for?"

"Making something beautiful." he answered and hoped that would be enough. He wanted it to be a bit of a surprise and bragging about creating life was so tasteless, though pride would be absolutely justified given his plans. 

Wanda nodded and retreated into her brother's arms, head tucking under Pietro's chin as he craned his neck to look at the glow of the stone as well. Blue light played over their faces, and reflected in their eyes. 

Red. Ultron decided. He wanted red, blue was just a bit too eerie. 

He tossed the staff into the air, admired the glow of energy and the wash of cool color over the darkness of the room. The twins were resettling themselves in their nook and he started towards the exit. 

"See you in Korea, then." he said, and it sounded dumb. Honestly, he had standards of wit to maintain. 

Pietro nodded, "If you are worried we are going to be late, you clearly have not been paying enough attention."

Wanda was still looking at him, looking through him, really, but she managed to drift back to Earth long enough to agree. "I don’t think we would miss it." 

Ultron had things to do, a body to make, a world to save/destroy. He didn't linger. 

He didn't have eyes in the back of his head and none of his drones were in the room after him, but somehow he still knew that the twins watched him until he was gone. If that was humanity, that itching awareness in the back of your brain and the shudder down your spine and the things that didn't make sense but still were, he thought giving it a shot wouldn't be the end of the world. 

Well, it would, but it would be fun too.

 

 

Wanda had never made a person before. She knew Ultron wasn't entirely her responsibility but she did hold a sizeable portion of it, enough that even thinking about it made her dizzy. 

She and Pietro were two pieces of the puzzle, not identical but perfectly matched. They had created one another, growing together like two strands of ivy, each climbing up the other in pursuit of their goal. Despite the handful of minutes that separated them there was never any question of who had shaped the other more. In that, like all things, they were equal and the equality made things simple. 

Ultron wasn't simple. He was terrifying and alien, and tall and beautiful, and he should have been perfect, he should have been her every wish. Tony Stark destroying himself and leaving something better in his place, which was more than she could have ever hoped for. It was like a story, it could have been a story, the brother and sister lost in the world until a mysterious benefactor gave them the powers to protect themselves and then they made a hero to give back all that had been taken. But Strucker had been no fairy godmother- Wanda bit back a laugh at the mental image- and Ultron was too strange to be a knight in shining armor. She couldn't read him and all she could see on the surface was disjointed and variable, kindness and cleverness and an absentminded sort of brutality. There had to be some logic behind it, but Wanda didn't know for sure and that unsettled her. 

The twins had always been a sphere unto themselves and they kept their own council. They hadn't had any reason to take anyone into their little circle for years, it wasn't like they had trusted Strucker's men at all and even the other street children and protestors had been distant from them. Now there was someone else and that someone was unpredictable, to say the least. 

They would adapt, Wanda told herself. They had to. Perhaps the story had been a little off the tracks from the start, perhaps the children lost in the woods hadn't suffered prettily but had bled and starved, perhaps there had been screaming before her power set in, perhaps there had been no magic only cold science and the cruelty of learned men and women. But she and Pietro had survived it and they were so, so close to their goals. Ultron wasn't an angel or a knight but he was an ally and he was helping. Surely there was a little magic left. 

All Wanda's magic did was tear things to pieces and in some way Ultron was a result of that power. In many ways that didn't bode well. 

She couldn't go back to reading, not with all the thoughts swirling in her head. Honestly she couldn't even remember why she had picked the book up in the first place, it was a highly technical physics journal, one of the only pieces of material she had found in the lab, and her schooling had stopped terribly short at ten. She could make out more than she expected but for the most part it was gibberish. 

Wanda threw the book at the cold stone floor and Pietro looked at her in askance. 

"Not a very good plot." she whispered, the emptiness surrounding them seemed to beg for quiet. 

Pietro laughed softly. "It did look a bit dry, sister."

"Should we go?" Pietro knew what she meant instantly, he always knew. Wanda couldn't imagine that with Ultron, not ever. 

"I thought we were staying?"

She shrugged. "It's not like we're doing much."

He shoook his head and shot her a sideways smile. "I don't want to go yet." There would be no argument, that was simply how it was now. Still, Wanda saw no reason not to poke fun. 

"I thought you didn't get tired?"

He made a face at her. "Perhaps I thought we needed to spend some quality family time together."

Wanda hesitated before she spoke, the words impatiently tapping their feet on her tongue. "What will we do when the Avengers are gone?"

Pietro looked uncertain and she reached out a hand to reassure him, to say it was okay. He frowned and leaned into her palm. "We will stay with Ultron, won't we? He did say he would save the world, and I do not think we have ever been so petty as to stop at revenge. Not when there is so much we can do, for Sokovia, for the world." It was a long and well thought out statement, especially for Pietro who tended to let his words be as quick and thoughtless as the rest of him. 

"We will stay." Wanda agreed, trying out the phrase. "Do you think he will ever be like us?"

"How?" Pietro looked confused until she gestured to the two of them and he understood. Like them, like two halves of a whole. He settled back down and gave a definitive, "No. There is no one like us. We don't need anyone but each other."

Wanda nodded because now it was so, that was the way of the world. There was no one like them. "That is true. But I think he could be a friend, could he not?"

"He could." Pietro agreed. "He's not half bad."

She smiled and tried to imagine the future but it all came away rusty. She had made him, or made someone else make him, she was culpable. He was very odd and but she felt a she had a certain amount of responsibility to Ultron. And he would never be like them. She almost felt sorry for him. 

Pietro could tell, she knew, and he gave her a soft look. "We do not have many friends." he said simply and it meant a million things, but mostly 'It will be all right, giant metal person and all' and 'I love you.' 

He smiled and picked up her physics textbook. "Tell me a story?" he asked, as if they were children again. He didn’t usually ask. Usually the stories just happened, one of them whispering to the other that they would be okay, that everything would be fine. 

"About particle physics?" she queried, wrapping an arm around him. Before the experiments she would have told him to read to himself but since then Pietro had little patience for books. If he read as fast as he wanted to he ripped out all the pages. But he would listen to her.

"About anything." Pietro said, and she could tell he was as unsettled as she was, by Ultron, by everything. "Then we'll leave." 

Pressed against him and hands fluttering demonstratively, Wanda told a story about two orphans and their friend, the tin man, on the way to find the evil sorcerer who killed their parents so they could reclaim their kingdom. (When it came to story time she maintained deep-set monarchist sensibilities, hilariously at odds with her usual views on the subject.) Halfway there they found out that the evil sorcerer was the tin man's father and he had turned him into metal as a punishment. There was almost a falling about between the orphans and the tin man. But they made up and kept towards their goal and after many trials they were back in the orphans’ kingdom where they defeated the evil sorcerer and his many, equally evil allies, and broke the spell on the tin man so he was human again. The orphans were restored to their place as prince and princess and Wanda nearly married the tin man off to the princess but Pietro objected so instead she paired him up with the prince. That earned her a scowl and Wanda found herself laughing for the first time in a while.

It was a good story, given how little thought was behind it. She wished it would be true. 

They went to Korea.


End file.
